


you are the uproar

by SweetVanny (esoterpsi)



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's, Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location - Fandom, Five Nights at Freddys 3, Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator - Fandom
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Eggs Benedict is Michael Afton, FFPS takes place in 2025 (roughly), FNAF 1 takes place in 1993, FNAF 3 takes place in 2021, Five Nights at Freddy's 1, Five Nights at Freddy's 3, Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location, Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator | Five Nights at Freddy's 6, Gen, HandUnit is essentially a big dad joke from beyond the fursuit grave, Michael is human, Michael-centric, Mike Schmidt is Michael Afton, Not Beta Read, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Protag of FFPS is Michael Afton, Protag of FNAF 3 is Michael Afton, SL takes place in 1991, Takes place from 1991-circa 2025, apparently there's a theory he's a robot out there, at first, basically every non-named protag is michael, essentially just all the games michael's in or implied to be in, fnaf lore compliant to a point, for the purposes of this fic he is not, i will add the characters when they show up, mainly because i didn't want to make up a name for him, man's seen some stuff, not gonna lie this is just a retelling of the games, probably not the most updated acceptance of canon but oh well, the crying child is cassidy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24725086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esoterpsi/pseuds/SweetVanny
Summary: Michael Afton has not had the best childhood, but eight years after the Bite of '83 and his parents' divorce, he's slowly building a life for himself.That all changes when he receives a letter from his estranged father telling him there's something he needs to do for him.
Comments: 40
Kudos: 85





	1. 01 - April 13th, 1991

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't going to post this this early into writing it initially, but I need some motivation to continue so I hope y'all enjoy this a little earlier than I planned!
> 
> Anyway, this first chapter is a bit of an infodump, but the next chapter will be coming soon and that is when the action starts!!

The life of Michael Afton was one that had been filled with tragedy since its very beginnings. If asked, he would say that he could barely recall the sunnier years of his childhood, where he had grown up with a happy and whole family - far from peaceful, as having two younger siblings was concerned, but compared to what had come afterwards it had been perfect. He could vaguely remember the joy at first Elizabeth and then his baby brother’s - Cassidy’s - birth, paired with the confusion emblematic of childhood at why there were new tiny humans taking up his parent’s attention, or the excitement as he was told he had new siblings to play with.

However, he couldn’t focus on those memories for long, as they would quickly be overrun with more recent ones, ones he would much rather forget.

Things like Elizabeth. The middle child who’d once been so sweet was always their father’s favourite and it had made her spoiled - hardly a demon child, now that he looked back on it, but he’d never had the time to watch her grow and as such his thought of her were always tainted by the pettiness of his former child self. Every time he recalled her in such a negative way he had to remind himself he was far from a saint. In fact, he was probably the worst of the family.

No, he was the worst in the family. He was a murderer. He had killed Cassidy.

By now everyone who knew Michael knew what had happened. He’d been young, around 11 or 12, and Cassidy had been 6. No, 7 - it was his 7th birthday. Michael and some friends - people he swore he had never talked to again after the incident - had been teasing Cassidy. At the time, it had felt like playful teasing, but looking back Michael knew it was cruel. They had practically tortured the kid, and one of them (Michael didn’t know whether it was him or someone else anymore, either way it was still his fault) had decided to take the bullying to the next level.

“Looks like he wants to give Fredbear a big kiss!”

The moment that that ugly animatronic’s jaws closed around Cassidy’s head was the moment Michael’s childhood ended. His mum wouldn’t talk to him, and every time she looked at him Michael could see the fear in her eyes, as if she was thinking “What is my son capable of?”

Dear old dad, however, was a different story.

The minutes, hours, even days after Cassidy was “bitten” were like a blur to him, but Michael would never forget his father and the way he acted. Where his mum leaned away and focused on helping Elizabeth, his dad seemed to crowd into Michael, never far away, always muttering almost feverishly to him about how “It’s okay, you’re not a bad kid, I’m still proud of you.”

Looking back, that was probably a bit of a red flag. But it was the comfort Michael needed through the days after what was being called the Bite of ‘83 in the local news. Somehow, his parents had managed to clear his name, claiming the incident as a freak accident - possibly because nobody was actually watching the kids at the time and his dad had the access to the security footage, being one of the owners of the diner.

A month after the Bite, Michael’s mum left his dad, and against all odds took him with her. It was the first sign of forgiveness, Michael thought, and Elizabeth was refusing to leave her dad, so he guessed it made sense. At first, the two halves of the family met up occasionally, for the sake of the kids seeing both parents, but after a while that fizzled out.

One night when he was 14, Michael remembered coming downstairs for a drink to see his mum on the phone, with whom he never found out. She had a look of abject shock and horror on her face, and as he watched she broke down into sobs. He couldn’t move, however much he wanted to help her.

Elizabeth never visited again, and neither did Dad.

For the rest of the ‘80s, Michael looked after his mum. She never told him what happened to Elizabeth, or even that the call he’d witnessed that night was about her, but deep down he knew. Something had happened to her, and he’d never see her again. Through the grief, Michael’s mother became his closest (and only - he’d been popular at school until the Bite, where everyone saw him for what he was; a murderer) friend and confidant. It really was the two of them against the world.

For a while, they kept a vague eye on Michael’s father - he was in the public eye for a while as the co-owner of the diner where the Bite took place and then the owner of multiple spin-off restaurants and finally a rental company - and then he vanished. Michael’s mum said she was glad, she wanted nothing to do with him, but the radio silence had them both uneasy, eyeing the phone in case news about another family disappearance sprung up.

They couldn’t be on alert forever, and as the years passed the panic faded into a dull weariness. There was an unspoken agreement in the house not to talk about Will or Michael’s siblings, but sometimes on particularly bad nights they would sit together in silence, communicating their mourning with just each other’s company.

Life continued like this for years - 8, to be specific. And then Michael was almost 20, a grown adult studying a robotics degree at the local university. His mother had asked whether it was wise to follow in his father's footsteps - one of the few times she'd brought him up in those 8 years - and he'd asserted that he wanted to make sure nothing like what had happened to Cassidy would ever happen to anyone ever again. In his searches of the house, he'd stumbled across old - decades old - concept sketches from his father and his co-owner Henry that must have dated to long before he was even born, or at least when the two men were Michael's own age. What he'd discovered was that safety regulations were either much looser than he'd thought in the 70s and 80s, or the two had little to no regard for them anyway.

So he fixed them. He worked on them in his classes and his spare time, and he even managed to dig up blueprints from the now mostly defunct restaurants his father left in his wake. Some of them had been found by collectors who were intrigued by the mystery of the animatronic restaurant train that seemed to leave nothing but tragedy in its wake, but as soon as Michael introduced himself as the son of one of the owners, people were more than willing to share their hoards of memorabilia in exchange for first hand records of the restaurants, or what he remembered of them. 

He had acquired quite a collection over time, and with it he managed to piece together the weird sequence of events before his father's disappearance.

Fredbear's Family Diner was shut after the death of Cassidy, but Michael could be forgiven for not being aware with all of the familial and emotional stress he was under. However, after that, Henry and William - it felt weird to call him Dad when he'd not been in Michael's life for almost a decade, to the point where Michael's memories of him were fuzzy at the edges and he could barely recall his face without photographic help - had renamed the company and completely rebranded.

And thus, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza was born. It was close enough to the original brand that the old fans wouldn't be too put out, but new enough that they could avoid most of the scrutiny from the public. They'd added new characters - based off the original designs Michael remembers quite well.

Then children died. It wasn't an accident as Cassidy had been - it was so much more. Someone had murdered children in the location. By this point Fazbear Entertainment was far from two people and was it's own company, and it had been covered up swiftly and another less harsh rebrand took place, but then, merely four years after Cassidy, another person was "bit" by an animatronic. From the news, Michael remembers it wasn't a child, thank goodness, but a night guard - Jeremy, his name was. He'd survived somehow and had gotten a hefty amount of money from the company, and if rumours were correct he still worked there. Michael had no idea how; he hadn't even been the one bitten and he had refused to step foot in one of those restaurants for years. 

Anyway, the Bite of '87 surprisingly wasn't the reason for the "new and improved" location being closed in a week, it was something much darker. There'd been a birthday party the day before. Michael had almost vomited when he'd found out what had happened. The killer - whoever they were - from the last location had found their way back into the building. Even more kids were killed. The company had closed for years, only just finding their feet with very extreme security a year prior in 1990.

And that was the end, apparently. The murderer hadn't been back, and had in fact just vanished. Police interviews seemed baffled yet grateful that the problem had "sorted itself out".

Michael wasn't sure when his research into his father's animatronics had turned him into a true crime conspiracy theorist, but he was sure there had to be more. He'd wanted to visit the new restaurant, and in reality nothing was stopping him, but he was fairly sure he wouldn't get any answers from the staff; from others' accounts they were all just teens and young adults working a minimum wage job. That, and he didn't feel he could balance the hours of a night shift job with a full time university course, that was how crippling caffeine addiction manifested.

He'd voiced this to his mother one day, who had given him a strange look and not much else to go on.

Michael had no idea why, however the answer found him sooner than he thought - this conversation happened a week before his 20th birthday.

And then it was his birthday.

He woke up, completely expecting it to be a normal April morning; he and his mum didn't make a big deal out of birthdays anymore. It was early - the trip to college was a solid half an hour walk (he hadn't gotten around to buying a car and the public transport was laughable) so he was fully ready for his mum to still be in bed and for nothing much to happen apart from a few greetings from his classmates.

However, when he made his way downstairs, still bleary from sleep, his mother was in the living room waiting for him. She was still in the clothes she'd been in the previous night and Michael doubted she'd slept, which was the first of many alarms the scene before him set off. The second was her expression, her mouth twisted into a thin line and her eyebrows furrowed in concern. In short, she looked grim.

"Have you slept?" was the first thought he could voice, and it was the first of many questions unanswered in this conversation. Instead of acknowledging he had spoken, his mum just stood.

"Mike, there's something I've been keeping from you." Michael almost laughed; it sounded like she was about to tell him she'd finally moved on from his dad ("About time," he would have said had that been the case.) The situation seemed too tense, though so he stopped himself.

"Yeah?"

"It's about your father."

Of all the discussions, that was not what Michael was expecting.

"What."

"The last time I saw him, he gave me something. Something he wanted me to give you when you were 20."

"Mum, the last time you saw him you said you'd rather eat glass than listen to him." This had been when she had thought Michael and Liz had been out of earshot. Liz had been; Michael hadn't.

"This was important."

For the first time Michael noticed what was in his mum's hands. A letter, yellowed with age, with his name scrawled on it in handwriting that was almost unfamiliar. Michael stopped short, suddenly much more aware of his heart beating than he had been previously. Slowly, almost tentatively, he reached out to take the aged envelope.

_"Michael,_

_If you're reading this, I'm long gone."_

No shit, Michael thought to himself. His father hadn't spoken to him in years and has been seemingly off the grid a chunk of that time.

_"By that, I mean dead."_

Ah.

The confirmation he knew he and his mother were desperate for, and yet. There was no sign of the overwhelming grief he'd felt in the hospital with Cassidy, or that night six years ago on the stairs, eavesdropping on his mother's call. There was just a sense of relief, almost.

There was a small gasp from beside him, and he turned to see his mum had been reading over his shoulder (or rather, from the side; Michael had clearly gotten his height from his father's side of the family. Mum had always been short, but in the last few years it looked like she'd almost withered away into a fragment of her previous self.)

"At least we know, now," Michael absently reassured her, not entirely sure how to react himself to the news. But she wasn't looking at the first line of the page - her eyes were fixed further down, so Michael continued reading.

_"I didn't expect this to happen so soon, but I can't ignore it - or you - anymore. Something bad is going to happen to me soon, and I asked your mother to give this to you in a year, just to make sure it's definitely happened."_

"You talked to Dad a year ago?!"

Michael's mother inclined her head, a tiny movement that would be unnoticed if he hadn't been staring right at her incredulously. To Michael's knowledge, the last time they'd spoken had been six years ago; how long had she been lying?

"It was the only time he got in contact with me after..." the phone call about Liz. Michael knew that.

"Ah."

Slowly, Michael forced himself to continue reading.

_"However, I don't want my work to be in vain. Your mother mentioned you wanted to work in robotics, and here's your chance. I need you to do something for me."_

And then William explained everything.

Elizabeth was dead; that much Michael already knew, but to have it so explicitly confirmed in the same letter where his dad so nonchalantly spoke of his own demise sent him reeling. Not only that, it had been a situation like Cassidy - there'd been robots Will was working on, and one of them had gone wrong, and William had had to disappear. He spoke of the eyes on him from police as one of the linking factors in the murders that had happened in the past years, and Michael was inclined to agree that it had been sensible for him to go off the grid, even as the situation laid in front of him was getting more and more disturbed.

His own father had been a murder suspect. Michael could barely believe it; the man had been eccentric, to his knowledge, but the William of his childhood memories couldn't possibly be a killer. And then, a child had died in his work, with only him to vouch that it hadn't been him. Granted, it had been his own daughter, but police weren't likely to take that as an excuse. So instead, the facility had never officially opened and William had vanished.

Michael would argue that that would seem just as suspicious, but then again, grief made people do crazy things. Michael would know.

The letter went on for multiple pages, in William's rushed scrawl - it was like someone was attempting to write in cursive at ridiculous speeds, and as such Michael had to reread some passages multiple times to make any sense out of them. However, he managed to piece together what exactly William wanted him to do.

Michael was to go to the facility. The place wasn't closed like he would have assumed - instead, it was running, but barely, with only a few trusted workers. When he got there, he was to become employed as the technician working the night shift. Will reasoned that it was probably more work experience than his university course was able to provide which probably wasn't true, but there was an undertone of desperation to the entire letter that Michael felt compelled to be less harsh than he usually would on his reasoning.

Apparently, Will had programmed an AI that would help Michael, and he wouldn't need to go through an interview process of any kind.

"This sounds like, what's the word?"

"Nepotism,"

"Nepotism."

It also sounded incredibly sketchy, but the letter read like a plea. If William was indeed dead, this would be his final wish.

Michael turned to his mother.

"I don't want you to go," she mumbled, as if it was a death sentence and not just a weirdly worded job offer. Michael knew she was probably right to be concerned, but he shrugged.

"It can't be that bad - what is it, only a week?"


	2. 02 - 15th April, 1991

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bro i forgot to update yesterday and it's only the second chapter-
> 
> we're off to a great start, and so is michael

Well. This was it.

The unassuming building in front of Michael didn't exactly look like the entrance to a high-tech robotics facility, but he knew better than to judge anything by its outside. And plus, he'd checked on his phone several times and this was definitely the right location. It was a low-roofed brick building in the middle of a more run-down part of town, just a few miles from Michael's house. He could easily walk there and back in less than an hour, but that was an attempt for another time. For now, he decided to enter the facility.

The door was nondescript and set down a side-street, which if Michael was being honest contributed to the small part of his brain that theorised that this was some kind of set-up. Nonetheless, he tried the door and was only slightly surprised that it was unlocked. What was by far more surprising was the interior.

It was dark, the only light being that let in by the open door (and being 11pm, that light was the fragments of illumination caused by the streetlamps from the main street), and as such Michael decided the first thing he needed to do was find a lightswitch. That task was easily completed as the light switch was big and obvious next to the door, almost industrial in its appearance.

As was the rest of the room he found himself in when the light flickered into life. The interior was much closer to the description of the facility had led him to believe than the outside, with pipes leading his eye down the corridor and lining the walls and ceiling. There was nothing particularly interesting lining the - was that metal? - walls, but the hallway led to a door aptly labelled "Entrance", so Michael figured that was the way to go. He walked over, his footsteps echoing over the (also metal, apparently) floor much louder than he expected. There was definitely a theme with the materials making up this facility - Michael felt like he was in a spaceship almost.

Behind the door at the end of the hall, there was... An elevator. William's letter had mentioned that most of the facility was underground, but Michael hadn't quite expected all of it to be below the town. Figuring there was no point in waiting, Michael stepped into the elevator. No sooner than he had stepped in, a pair of sliding doors seemingly behind the ones he'd pulled open to get into the lift shut with a hiss and a creak. Despite being in an elevator, Michael wasn't completely ready for the descent to begin, and as it did, he felt his knees buckle slightly. Pressing a hand to the wall to steady himself, his hand hit paper instead of the metal he was used to seeing. He glanced to the side; a poster, showing a tall, slender animatronic dressed like a ballet dancer.

Was this one of the robots here? 

" _Welcome to the first day of your exciting new career!"_

Michael was sure he must have jumped about a foot in the air; the voice was loud, clear, and came from right behind him. He spun around, completely ready to see a person, and for a moment came up short until the source of the noise spoke again.

_"Whether, you were approached at a job fair, read our ad's at Screws, Bolts, and Hairpins, or if this is a result of a dare..."_

A moment of searching found that the sound was coming from a small handheld object hooked on the wall. It was yellow, and the main body of it was yellow. Most of it was taken up by a small, slightly flickering screen, and Michael noted with slight amusement that it had two cartoony eyes attached to the top. Interestingly enough, someone must have been expecting him, because on a slip of paper hastily taped to the top of the object was "Mike". 

"Huh." Mike was something only Michael's parents had ever called him, so seeing it somewhere that wasn't from his mum was slightly jarring.

 _"...We welcome you."_ Something about the voice from the object - which Michael suddenly realized was probably the "AI help" his dad had talked about - seemed familiar, although he had no idea where from. And moreover, had it been waiting for him since Will wrote the letter? According to his mum, that had been over a year, and Michael felt a weird sense of pity. The handwriting his name had been written on matched the letter he had tucked into his pocket, meaning the answer was probably.

Snap out of it, Michael thought, it's just a machine, it can't feel things.

While he'd been pondering the sentience of AI, the object had introduced itself as Model 5 of the "Handyman's Robotics and Unit-Repair System - _But you can call me HandUnit!_ "

So it had a name. As Michael looked back down at it, a small keypad appeared on the screen. It wasn't like anything he'd seen before; the letters were in seemingly no order, and some of the letters were just... not there.

 _"_ _Please enter your name as seen above the keypad. This cannot be changed later, so please be careful,"_ HandUnit chimed, and Michael squinted at the keypad - half of the letters in "Michael" or even "Mike" were absent. Was this a joke? His dad had been known for his weird tricks and jokes when he'd been a kid, so he would hardly be surprised. Guessing he had nothing to lose, Michael tentatively pressed a random key on the screen. Again, HandUnit's voice cut through the silence.

_"It seems you had some trouble with the keypad. I see what you were trying to type, and I will auto-correct it for you."_

"Did you really?" Michael muttered to himself, quickly chastising himself for talking to what he presumed was just a recording - after all, it hadn't responded to the quite frankly embarrassing yell he'd let out upon being, well - being jump-scared by it.

_"Welcome, Eggs Benedict."_

Okay, this was definitely one of his dad's weird jokes. Even knowing the man was "long gone", the entire joke reeked of his eccentricities. 

In this whole situation, Michael hadn't realized the elevator had stopped. When did it stop? How far underground was he? He had no idea at this point, and he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know - he'd never liked the idea of being enclosed, and just thinking about the tonnes of dirt and rock that could be above him right now was making him uneasy. The air down here was stagnant, like it hadn't been touched in years. And maybe it hadn't with the thick layer of dust coating everything. Wasn't there supposed to be other workers here?

_"You can now open the elevator using that bright red and obvious button"_

"I don't like your tone," Michael absently responded even as he watched the button flash for a few seconds more. Then he sighed and pushed it. The elevator doors slid - no, more like popped - open and in front was... A vent shaft?

"You're kidding me." Just as he'd been thinking about how claustrophobic he was. "The only way in and you have to crawl through a vent?"

Reasoning that they were bigger than most vents he'd seen, Michael sighed for what felt like the tenth time since he had entered the building and dropped down to the level of the vent. Almost as an afterthought, he stood back up and crossed to the other side of the elevator, grabbing HandUnit from the wall. 

Then, he entered the vents and began his first night.

Even though he'd mentally prepared for the tight space of the vent beforehand, being in it, with no way to see what lay beyond him in the darkness, was far from a pleasant experience. Every time he craned his neck forward to see what was ahead, all that he could make out was the repeated enclosed walls of the vents he was dragging himself through. Minutes passed, and out of nowhere HandUnit seemed to figure the silence was too much.

_"Allow me to fill this somewhat frightening silence with some lighthearted banter. Due to the massive success and even more-so the unfortunate closing of 'Freddy Fazbear's Pizza', it was clear that the stage was set, no pun intended, for another contender in children's entertainment."_

Run by the exact same man, Michael noted. Clever - you can't lose to a rival business if you _are_ the rival business.

_"Unlike most entertainment venues, our robotic entertainers are rented out for private parties during the day. And it's your job, to get the robots back in working order before the following morning."_

Shockingly enough, this was the first Michael had actually heard about his job other than vague promises, and he took a moment to wonder how William had known about his studies; he was in his second year, and according to Michael's mother, the last time she'd even seen William before the letter had been years before that. 

Nothing was adding up, but he was already here. He had reached the end of the vent, and as he pushed the covering open to exit, a feminine voice echoed over the sound system.

_"Motion trigger; entryway vent."_

The room he finally emerged into was larger than the vent, but not by much - Michael still had to stoop slightly, but he was grateful to at least be vertical. There were large windows taking up the top half of each side wall, and vents below them - he hoped if he had to crawl through them that they weren't as long as the last one. There was a strange greenish tint to the place, and Michael spotted the source to be a thick layer of dust over the slightly buzzing lamp above his head. In front of him, there was a large fan with yet another vent below it, and above there was a strange decoration; a white clown-like mask. The structure was similar to what Michael had noticed on the posters in the elevator, and he wondered if this was a previous part of one of the "robotic entertainers".

Speaking of, linked to the (much larger, Michael grumbled to himself) rooms this weird space was looking out on were stands with dimly glowing buttons on. Michael peered through the glass of the one on the left; the room on the other side of the glass was mostly dark, but he could see the silhouette of a stage. Turning, the other side was almost identical, the only difference being the shape of the stage was slightly different.

_"You are now in the "Primary Control Module"."_

"Christ, you definitely know how to wait until I'm least expecting it to talk," Michael automatically responded. He vaguely recalled chastising himself for talking to an inanimate object earlier, but it's not like anyone was here to judge him. It must have been around midnight at this point, although he'd conveniently forgotten to bring his watch and time was already beginning to feel slightly altered.

" _It's actually a crawl space between the two front showrooms."_ That explained the smallness of the room. And the two front showrooms must be the ones he could see on either side.

HandUnit proceeded to instruct Michael to look at the left window, to which Michael muttered a "Way ahead of you, buddy." It introduced the room as the "Ballora Gallery Party Room and Dance Studio", which Michael decided to immediately shorten in his brain to just "Ballora Gallery", because that name was much too long and unnecessary.

_"Let's turn on the light to see if Ballora is on her stage."_

On cue, the top button of the stand next to the glass lit up - it was blue, and had a little icon Michael recognized as one for light. He pressed it, and the view of the room became a little clearer. This bright, he could see the stage was empty.

"Are they supposed to do that?"

_"Uh-oh, Ballora doesn't feel like dancing. Let's give her some motivation. Press the red button now to administer a controlled shock."_

Somehow that seemed cruel. Reminding himself that this was a robot and not a living being, Michael looked down at the buttons, the bottom one now flashing red, and shrugged. He pressed it and for a moment everything went dark. The sound of electricity filled his ears, and then it was over and everything faded back into normalcy.

_"Let's check the light again."_

Tentatively, Michael did so, and was surprised to find it had actually done something. Spinning around was the same animatronic he'd spotted on the poster - he presumed she was Ballora.

_"Excellent. Ballora is feeling like her old self and will be ready to perform again tomorrow."_

Was that it? In his two years of studying, Michael had found that a "fix" was more about finding loose wires and objects stuck in the internal workings of the robot, not... Whatever that was. Maybe William hadn't known exactly about his career goals, and it was just an easy way to get some money. That didn't explain why he wanted Michael of all people.

He was starting to regret coming here.

HandUnit instructed him to check the other window, and surprise surprise, "Funtime Foxy"" was also absent. Michael didn't have time to wonder what programming would cause the robots to just... wander off, because it then told him to shock this other animatronic. Figuring that it hadn't done Ballora any harm, he pressed the button again and plunged the room into momentary darkness. When the light returned, however, Funtime Foxy was nowhere to be seen still.

"Maybe this time I'll actually get the chance to fix something," Michael mumbled to himself, but HandUnit simply piped up and told him to shock it again. "Doesn't too much electricity mess with the wiring?"

After another "controlled shock" (with the way it caused all the lights in the vicinity to flicker and buzz, Michael wasn't sure how controlled it actually was) Michael could make out the silhouette of another robot - similar in build to the "Foxy" animatronics that had been built over time at what was supposedly this place's "rival" company. It didn't seem smart to have the same robot over what was meant to be two different brands, but Michael reasoned that William had never been the person to go to for consistency; the way he'd acted to Michael after '83 had been completely different from anything Michael remembered seeing before, almost like he'd put a persona on to help his son through the trauma of killing someone. Or removed the mask he'd been wearing for years, Michael reasoned. Either was equally likely with the memory-blurred version of his father in his mind. At the time, he hadn't noticed anything, but Michael knew better than anyone that children see the world very differently from how it actually was.

 _"In front of you is another vent shaft. Crawl through it to reach the 'Circus Gallery Control Module'."_ HandUnit cut through his thoughts in a way Michael was just starting to get used to. When he'd seen the other vents in the room, it had been obvious that at some point he would have to go through them, but Michael still felt a sinking sensation at the realization that "at some point" meant now.

"May as well get it over with," he reasoned, and squeezed into the vents.

On the bright side, this vent wasn't as long as the last one, and Michael found he could see the end not long after entering. He figured the vents must span the length of the auditoriums on each side, but it was still hard to get a scope on the distance when he was pulling himself through a cramped tunnel.

The female voice piped up - _"Motion trigger; Circus Gallery vent."_

This "module" was (thankfully) bigger than the last, although Michael wasn't entirely sure why. Instead of two windows on either side, there was one, filling the opposite wall to where he had just entered from. The entire room was slightly curved, and in front of the middle windowpane was a control desk of some kind.

_"On the other side of the glass is 'Circus Baby's Auditorium'; let's check the light and see what Circus Baby is up to."_

Circus... Baby? Michael couldn't help but feel like the names in this place were getting weirder and weirder. Ballora seemed like an actual name - he guessed it was close to "ballerina" as the appearance of the animatronic suggested. "Funtime Foxy" was slightly more confusing; why not just call it Foxy? The added descriptive implied there were more "Funtimes" which Michael was yet to encounter - either that, or the creator (his dad, Michael assumed,) was acknowledging the sharing of characters between the locations. "Circus Baby" just sounded like they had no ideas and they were shoving nouns together.

Pressing the light, Michael was less than surprised to see nothing, although this auditorium was significantly darker than the others, lacking even the slight lights coming from the other side of the space that had allowed Michael to make out the vague silhouettes of the stages. Even with the light supposedly on, the blackness of Circus Baby's Auditorium seemed to go on as far as he could make out, and he couldn't even see the shape of a stage. Michael presumed this was just because it was looking like "Circus Baby" - who he would refer to as Baby to lessen the ridiculousness he felt - was the "main star" of the trio, and as such would have a bigger showroom, but that didn't explain why he could see nothing at all.

_"Looks like a few of the lights are out, but we can fix that later."_

Ah. 

_"Let's encourage Baby to cheer up with a controlled shock."_

Wait, HandUnit hadn't even said anything about whether Baby was there or not. Was it assuming she wasn't?

Taking a deep breath, Michael pressed the now familiar red button, and watched with disinterest as the lights flickered. He pressed the light again, unprompted, and saw nothing.

_"Let's try another controlled shock."_

Yet again, nothing.

_"Let's try another controlled shock."_

"Do you have no better ideas?" Michael complained, but there was, of course, no response from the handheld device. Heaving a sigh that was probably more dramatic than needed, Michael shocked Baby a third time, and lo and behold, nothing happened.

Apparently HandUnit seemed to have other ideas, as it just chimed, _"Good job Circus Baby, we knew we could count on you!"_

"She - it didn't even do anything!"

_"That concludes your duties for your first night on the job. We don't want you to feel overwhelmed. Otherwise, you might not come back... Please leave using the vent behind you and we'll see you again tomorrow."_

This felt like a waste of an evening, Michael thought to himself. Summoned by his estranged (and apparently dead) father for a job, only to press a few buttons and go home?

He just hoped the next few days would be more interesting than this. 

Michael tried not to focus on the tight spaces of the vent as he shuffled through. He wondered if his dad had expected him to be short, like his mother; if he had been maybe these vents wouldn't be nearly as much as a problem. Instead, here he was, a fully grown man, squeezing through what had to be less than a metre square space. He was so used to the sound of his own breathing that when something else sounded from behind him, he froze.

Was that a thud?

It couldn't be, he reasoned, but there it was again. A dull, metallic thud - and then another - from where he'd just been. They almost sounded like... footsteps?

The isolation must be getting to me, Michael thought even as he sped up his unceremonious crawling through the vents. There is no way anything could be in there - this is the only way in.

After almost missing the end of the vent and practically falling into the first control module, Michael found himself avoiding looking through the windows on either side as he crossed the small space back to the next vent. He couldn't explain it, but it felt like he was being watched.

The footsteps didn't follow him back to the elevator, but he listened for them anyway. He didn't feel truly relieved until he was outside of the building, the fresh air of the street feeling more refreshing than anything he'd ever experienced before.

He'd asked for more excitement, and he was already beginning to regret his decision.


	3. 03 - 16th April, 1991

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things start getting real tonight!
> 
> real talk, this is the longest chapter yet!

By the next day, Michael was slightly embarrassed to admit that he'd completely forgotten about his brief scare, or rather he had elected to ignore it. In his head on the way home, through the familiar streets of the town he'd lived in his whole life, he told himself it was the pipes creaking, the echoes of his own hands making contact with the metal vent shafts, whatever would soothe him. The further he got from the facility, the more relaxed he became, and the more convinced that nothing was wrong at all. As soon as he got home, the clock in the living room told him it was 3am. He'd been down there an hour at most; it had felt almost like years.

There wasn't much to say about the hours after that; he rather unceremoniously flopped into bed (not before making a mental note to have a nap before his next "shift") and woke up pretty much fully clothed, minus the shoes he had kicked off in the doorway. Upon awakening he realized that he was going to have to go to college with under five hours of sleep, and remembered exactly why he'd declined a night-shift job beforehand.

And that was only the first night.

Figuring there wasn't anything he could really do, Michael shrugged on some clean clothes (a shower could also wait, he was running late as it is) and began the walk to college. In his head, he planned out the day ahead of him. He was going to go to college and study like everything was normal, but upon returning home at around four in the afternoon he was going to sleep - and boy, he was looking forward to that. He would wake up at ten, get ready, and go to work, and hopefully they wouldn't keep him much longer than last time.

Walking to the local university was one of Michael's favorite parts of the day, surprisingly enough. Apart from the middle of winter, where he wished he had a car (which he guessed he could save up money for with this new job), it was a pleasant walk through the suburbs he'd grown up in, and then through the town center. The walk on average took around half an hour, and seeing as most of Michael's peers had cars or took the famously late bus, it was a quiet one. It gave him time to think, and on this particular day he was thinking about his new job.

Something he found strange about the situation was how little he knew - he'd been carefully following his own father's works for years, and never had he heard of a "Circus Baby" being shown to the public. Despite the HandUnit (which he had left in the elevator - he would have liked to have taken it home to study but he'd been in a bit of a state on the way out and had forgotten) being certain that the robots were rented out daily, it didn't look like anyone had been there in years. That also led to the question of why the door was unlocked; Michael had been given a key, but he hadn't had to use it, and he'd assumed that it was because another employee had left the door open for him. Instead, however, he'd descended into what felt like a catacomb - laying dormant for years.

It didn't help that the technology seemed well beyond what Michael had seen in the current Fazbear Entertainment robots, which had supposedly been built after these strange new animatronics. The glimpses Michael had seen from the poster of Ballora to the silhouette Funtime Foxy had revealed shining, streamlined designs, nothing like the clunky jagged movements of the robots he knew were operating today.

Either William had been way ahead of his time and wanted to keep it a secret, or there was something weird going on.

As well as this, what was up with HandUnit? It seemed much more advanced than it looked, and it even reacted to everything going on around it without any connections. It wasn't wired to anything in specific and that was fascinating in itself. Michael had to wonder if it operated by radio, or some other technology his own dad pioneered.

He was not awake enough to properly think about this.

Instead, his mind began to wander over to what had happened with Baby. He hadn't yet seen the robot, but the atmosphere of the Circus Gallery module was... Stifling. Like wherever she was in that room, she could see him. She was watching him. He had to admit, he was the most fascinated by her, probably just because he hadn't yet encountered her.

And she hadn't shown up, but HandUnit clearly thought she did. How did that work?

Michael had no more time to ponder because he had made it to the campus. Even more, his feet had carried him on autopilot to the outside of the building his first lecture of the day was in. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door, and entered, completely prepared to be late.

Surprisingly enough however, he must have walked faster than usual, because he was one of the first people there. Either that or the bus was even later than he was. He took a seat in one of the middle rows of the theatre - too far to the front and you were inviting questioning, and too far back the professor would always have an eye on you to make sure you weren't being disruptive. In the middle, Michael could comfortably zone out for all but the most important things; his extra research had made him fairly confident in the content being taught, so most of his notebooks were just full of doodles and notes to himself for later in the day.

The professor entered the room, and Michael began to write what he knew about his new job down in a way that he hoped looked like notes. He was seated far away enough from anyone (this course was fairly niche, giving each of the small amount of students the chance to spread their things out as much as they wanted to across the hall) that nobody was going to question what he was writing, but he still found himself instinctively covering his scrawlings with his hand whenever the girl in the row behind him sniffed too loudly. There was no reason to be secretive, he reasoned to himself, but then again he'd always felt a big of possessiveness with his research into Fazbear Entertainment. He knew some of the other students were here because their childhood memories of the restaurant chain had inspired them to work in robotics, but it felt close to him - it was his dad who'd apparently pioneered the animatronic aspect, and from that stemmed some almost childish attachment. Even though by all logic he should have hated the things, and yet something intrigued him about them. He'd refused to step into a Freddy Fazbear's Pizza for years and yet each iteration he found pieces of in some hoarder's collection felt familiar, like he'd seen it before.

At first, he had guessed that it was because the new bear mascot Freddy was essentially just a rebranded Fredbear, and Bonnie had only changed colour. Foxy and Chica had been in development when the Bite happened, and he just barely remembered that it was the prototype masks he and his friends - ex-friends - had donned during the event itself.

He'd known Cassidy was scared of them. That was why he'd worn them. And sure, when he saw photos of the up and running robots he saw flashes of his then-friend's mocking grins behind the animatronic heads, but it had faded. He'd never forgive himself for what happened, but his friends had barely even shown remorse; not that he would have known if they had. They'd barely spoken to him again.

But he was getting off-track. Despite the wariness he'd felt around the things, once he started to figure out how they worked the slight fear had dissolved into fascination. And the Bite was why he'd gotten into robotics in the first place, so there was no point in shying away from them - it was going to be his job to make them safe.

These new robots didn't have that familiarity. Not even the new Foxy - or what he'd seen of it - had sparked any recognition.

Hopefully he would have more answers by the end of tonight.

For now, though, Michael finished his idle scribbling on the notebook (which had long since devolved into just doodling) and focused his attention back on the professor, who was starting to wrap up the lecture. He caught a glimpse at the board he had been writing on and figured he would have to get some notes from a classmate; the subject was different from usual, and he had missed it completely with his pondering.

The rest of the daylight hours continued how he had expected; he attended his other lectures, went home and collapsed into bed. He awoke at 10pm - a time where he'd usually be thinking about sleeping (or more likely, watching late night TV that he could follow without thinking too hard) - and, hearing that his mother was indeed in bed, quietly got ready for his shift.

The family house was big, but not big enough that he could go crashing about without alerting anyone inside, and he made sure to keep the noise to a minimum as he got his stuff together; keys, wallet, the watch that he'd forgotten the day before. 

The walk to the facility was no different to last time - in fact, Michael felt it was slightly shorter to him as he'd walked it before - and at around 11:45 he was back in the elevator. HandUnit was right where he had left it, and as he picked it up it flickered back to life (or at least it's "on" status.

_"Welcome back for another night of intellectual stimulation, pivotal career choices, and self-reflection on past mistakes."_

Michael snorted; from yesterday's work, the most stimulating thing he was going to get was the slight aftershock of pressing the shock button on the animatronics.

However, instead of giving Michael instructions, HandUnit continued.

_"We're committed to create a unique and fulfilling work experience. One part of that commitment is ensuring that you don't get tired of the voice that you're hearing right now."_

HandUnit ran through a series of commands for a "new voice" and Michael watched in confusion; it's been one night, why would he have gotten bored? In fact, he was actually getting quite fond of HandUnit's dry delivery. The other reason for confusion was that the device was asking him to press numbers, and they keypad shown had none. It didn't seem to be sorting itself out, so Michael pressed a random button.

_"It seems you had some trouble with the keypad. I see what you were trying to type and will auto-correct it for you. Thank you for choosing Angsty Teen."_

Oh. This was another joke from William. Michael just sighed, hoping this "angsty teen" wouldn't be too annoying.

_"The elevator stopped. You know the routine. You can get out now, or... whatever. Stay here if you want."_

Sometimes, Michael hoped too much.

Sighing, he entered the vent shaft, hesitating only slightly less than yesterday.

Wait. Something had happened in these vents last time, right? Michael remembered the footsteps and stopped for a moment, listening for anything that could have made a similar noise that his brain had misinterpreted. 

HandUnit - Angsty Teen? - took this tense silence as the perfect moment to say, _"So... funny story. A dead body was found in these vents once."_

"A _what?_ " Michael hissed, forgetting he was talking to an inanimate object for one second.

_"Okay, so not that funny. But it's a story."_

Did HandUnit just respond to him? Michael didn't have time to unpack that bit of information, because he'd reached the end of the vent and was emerging into the Primary Control Module. It hadn't seemed like as long of a journey, weirdly enough. Maybe because he was getting used to squirming through the vents like a child in one of those kiddy-tunnels. He'd always hated those - they were probably the reason he was claustrophobic now.

Angsty Teen was much less enthusiastic than the regular HandUnit, but luckily still got the point across - it was time to check on Ballora. Michael did so, and was almost expecting it when he saw the empty stage. The voiceover seemed at least happy that Michael would have to shock the robot, chiming in with a _"Let's zap her. That should be fun."_

Doing this every night had to do some damage to the wiring in the robots, Michael was sure, but he pressed the button anyway. Angsty Teen started speaking, but much to Michael's surprise the voice seemed to glitch out, deepening and distorting until Michael couldn't understand a word it was saying, until finally it stopped and Michael was left in silence wondering what on earth had just happened.

_"Let's check on Funtime Foxy. Make sure he's ready for showtime tomorrow."_

Funtime Foxy was a he? Good to know, Michael guessed.

He pressed the button and almost jumped, banging his head on the already low ceiling. Funtime Foxy was _right there._ Not moving, just standing, his back to the window. From this close, Michael could make out the chrome-like shining plates that made up the robot's body parts, and the weirdly placed gaps between them.

_"Great._

_Great._

_**Great.** "_

Angsty Teen's voice was glitching again, and Michael had to admit it was a little unsettling. Quickly, though, HandUnit came to the rescue as its default voice cut through the silence.

_"There seems to have been a problem with the voice synthesizer."_

"Yeah, no shit." Michael mumbled to himself.

_"Default settings have been restored. Please proceed through the vent ahead of you to Circus Baby's auditorium."_

This was the vent where he'd heard it last time. Michael knew there was no point in putting it off, so he told himself he would be extra wary. The vent wasn't any less pleasant than any of the others, but with the added pressure of the residual fear from last night, Michael was very glad to see the entrance.

This module was exactly how he remembered it. The three glass panels looking out onto a very unsettling darkness, some ugly figurines and the control panel he still wasn't sure of the function of. Was it just him, though, or were the lights flickering more than last time?

_"Circus Baby had a busy day today. Let's check the light and make sure she's in proper working order."_

Michael had been under the impression the place was abandoned until HandUnit said that, what with the steadily accumulating piles of dust everywhere. Somehow the idea of anyone but him even seeing this place seemed weird. If his mother hadn't asked him how work had been the day before (and, of course, the slight bruises on his elbows from his adventures in the vents), he honestly would have assumed he'd hallucinated the entire facility. It was only just getting to him how surreal this place actually was.

Deciding now was not the right time to ponder whether what was happening was real or not, Michael pressed the light button. Of course, Circus Baby wasn't there. Why would she be? She hadn't even shown up the day before.

 _"Oh Circus Baby, we aren't here to play hide and seek!"_ And now the robotic guide was talking to the other robots. Great. _"Let's encourage Baby to come out with a controlled shock."_

Michael just rolled his eyes and pressed the below button, only for it to make a dull click instead of the usual dramatic flickering and zapping sounds. Didn't the lights not work yesterday in here either?

HandUnit barely acknowledged it, just repeating its phrase, and Michael tried again. The same response.

_"There seems to be a power malfunction that is affecting our ability to properly motivate Baby."_

"As if she was motivated by those in the first place," Michael retorted.

_"Please standby, while I reboot the system. I will be offline momentarily during this process. Various other systems may be offline as well, such as; security doors, vent locks, oxygen."_

"Oxygen?! You have to be kidding me."

_"Commencing system restart."_

There was a deep electrical hum as the module was plunged into darkness. Shit. Michael didn't realize how much background noise there was in this place until it all went silence. Behind him, around the facility, he could faintly hear the female computer voice announce each of the vents opening. That was... fairly ominous if Michael was honest. He looked around; he could see slightly more into the auditorium on the other side of the glass now that the lighting seemed more balanced between the two rooms, and slowly his eyes adjusted until he could see the black and white tiles extending a good few feet into the room.

_"I don't recognize you. You are new."_

This voice, in the most polite way, scared the shit out of Michael. It wasn't one of the computer ones, it sounded much too human, and plus, HandUnit had said it would be offline. As well as this, it didn't seem to be coming from the sound system; the closest speaker he had seen was in the vents, and this voice seemed to be coming from right in front of him.

Almost like... it was in the auditorium he'd been staring into. No, it was much too close for that.

The voice was feminine, and sounded young, like a child or a woman trying to sound younger than she was. It was also familiar, more so than HandUnit's had been, and Michael found himself scrambling to find a match in his brain - deep down, because this wasn't just the voice of some classmate and near stranger. It awoke a memory in him that he'd been pushing down for years, although for the life of him he couldn't place it from one line.

_"I remember this... scenario, however. It's a strange thing to want to do... to come here."_

What did that mean? Michael wondered if the voice was referring to the fact that the place seemed almost abandoned, with the exception of the (sometimes) working power and the clearly active robots. Why would it be strange, though? The facility was supposed to be showrooms - surely people would have wanted to be here? And above all that, there was an even more pressing question; who was this?

A childish female voice, and she seemed to be in the room with him.

Circus Baby?

_"I'm curious to what events would lead a person to want to spend their nights in a place like this... Willingly."_

Could she be any more cryptic?

Of course Michael had come here willingly - sure, his dad's letter had appeared out of nowhere, but it had been his decision to come. Hadn't it?

_"Maybe curiosity? Maybe ignorance."_

There was a beat, in which Michael swore he heard a sound from the vent shaft behind him. A small scraping sound - actually, more than one. Like something (a rat, maybe? the reasonable part of Michael thought).

Apparently "Baby", if that was really her, picked the sound up too.

_"There is a space under the desk. Someone before you crafted it into a hiding place, and it worked for him. I recommend that you hurry though."_

Crouching down, Michael could see there was a curved slab of some material (metal? Stone maybe?) covering most of the space under the desk. He leaned down and pulled it, and sure enough, it moved. Revealed behind it was a gap that he could just about squeeze into.

_"You will be safe there. Just try not to make eye contact."_

Shit, this was real.

_"It will be over soon. They will lose interest."_

The scratching sound in the vents was definitely getting louder. Without wasting another second, Michael dropped to his knees and maneuvered himself into the gap. From under the desk, it was slightly harder to pull the cover back over, but Michael managed (although the angle was awkward, and he worked to shift until he could comfortably hold it closed). From this close, Michael could see the strange holes in the material, like it had been part of some weird seventies abstract furniture. 

There was a small tinny thud, and Michael instinctively held his breath. 

He peered through the hole initially, but remembering what the new voice had said (and something about her voice seemed inherently trustworthy, as absolutely bonkers this entire situation was) he quickly pulled away.

From his hiding spot, he could hear even more voices, and he didn't have time to wonder what on earth could be making noise when one sounded out close enough that he was sure the source was right next to the desk.

_"Hello in there!"_

To be frank, if Baby had sounded like a woman pretending to be a child, these things (because there was no doubt in his mind that these were not human) sounded like demented actual children.

Michael noticed he still had his flashlight, something he'd picked up before he'd left the house, and with extra caution he turned it on. Maybe the thing would go away if he blinded it.

Instead, however, what he saw was a wide glassy eye, right by his feet, peering through one of the holes. This thing looked like one of those needlessly creepy baby dolls he would see in the antique shop next to the grocery store, but on crack. Remembering what Baby had said, he jerked the flashlight away, hoping it hadn't been too long. After a moment, he turned the light back to his feet, and the thing was gone.

He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or even more scared.

_"Someone is inside."_

_"Is it the same person?"_

So there was definitely more than one of those things out there. Their voices were identical, but they sounded like they were coming from different directions and distances, and Michael couldn't quite make out how many exactly they were. 

His flashlight had wandered, and another glassy purple eye appeared, this time at about chest level. He instinctively moved the light, and hoped all they wanted was a look.

_"Knock knock..."_

And with that, there was a grating sound as the heavy cover began to move.

"Fuck, fuck fuck fuck-" Michael cursed quietly, thinking there was no point in being quiet if they already knew he was there, and he rushed to close it again. He wasn't prepared for these... things to be so strong, though, and for a moment he felt like he wasn't going to be able to beat this weird game of tug and war, and the gap continued to get bigger. He strained to push harder, however, and soon the wall began to close again. For a scary moment, he thought they weren't going to stop and he'd have to hold it closed for a long time (which, considering he was using the holes they had peered through as leverage, was a scary thought,) but then it felt like they let go and a deep sense of relief washed over Michael. He pushed the cover further than it had been when he'd found it, making sure there was no gap, and sighed.

_"We always find a way inside...."_

The pressure began again. Michael swore yet again, but he was more ready this time and managed to stop the cover in its tracks. And then the weird doll-things' seemed to stop playing around and he was losing again. The gap into the darkness beyond started growing and growing, and Michael visualized the dolls jumping on him out of the void in front of him with rapidly growing panic. Desperate, he lodged his foot against the place where the cover was sliding against the solid walls of the desk (luckily, the cover was on the inside, allowing him to get some purchase against the wood, and started heaving with his entire body. Finally, the gap began to close. He could feel his heart beating out of his chest as he watched the inky blackness grow smaller and smaller.

Maybe he was imagining things, but he swore that just as he was about to close the cover, his eyes adjusted just enough to see the silhouette of a small figure; almost like one of those baby dolls Elizabeth had loved as a kid, but with proportions exaggerated to grotesqueness. He couldn't make out anything more than its shape, and soon enough he was closed back in. The force he'd been struggling against vanished almost as soon as the far edge of the cover touched the desk, so Michael took the reprive as a chance to catch his breath. He'd never thought that being stuck in an enclosed space would be such a _relief._

Through his panting, Michael almost missed the voice.

_"She's watching us!"_

From slightly further away, there was a gasp, followed by, _"We have to leave now. We will see you again soon!"_

Michael sure hoped not.

There was a brief moment of silence, where Michael wasn't sure whether it was safe to leave (the... things that had been tormenting him were apparently gone, but now he had no idea what was out there. There could be more things like them, just waiting around the corner for him.

_"When your "guide" comes back online, he is going to tell you that he was unsuccessful. That you must restart the system manually."_

There was also "Baby". Michael had no idea who the voice actually was, but it felt easier to stick with his gut instinct that that was her identity than to sit and question it all night long. He was still skeptical, but she's just helped him, right? He had no reason not to trust her.

_"He will then tell you to crawl through 'Ballora Gallery' as fast as you can to reach the 'Breaker Room'."_

How did she know this? Maybe there'd been people doing a similar job previously, Michael reasoned, but this place seemed untouched by the time passing outside. He'd felt like he was in here for years last night, only to find out it had been barely any time. There were no clocks, either, which while it was far from the weirdest thing in this place, still struck him as odd. It was like the place was designed to be apart from the rest of the world, with its own sense of time and space; heck, this was his second night and he still had no clue how big it was. Beyond his little modules the vast dark spaces could go on forever.

Or not apparently, as "Baby" had just said he would have to crawl through one of the galleries. Part of him let out an internal groan at the idea that he would have to crawl yet again (it was far from his favorite activity), but he reasoned that at least this time he would be able to breathe without walls touching him on every side and reminding him how penned in he was. Plus, if he did it quickly he would be able to get it over and done with.

_"If you follow his instructions... you will die."_

Well, fuck.


	4. 04 - 16th April, 1991

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night 2 continues.

Sometimes, Michael liked to look back at the seemingly insignificant decisions that led him to where his life was now - it could be cathartic in a way to remind himself that even the horrors of his childhood had shaped him into the person he was today. Yet no matter how he reflected, he still could not grasp what choice brought him here; squeezing through a tiny vent into a dark, open, and apparently extremely dangerous area. He'd managed to tuck HandUnit in his clothes so he didn't have to waste one hand carrying the thing around, but had quickly replaced it with the flashlight he'd picked up from home.

"Baby" had given him a general idea of what was so dangerous - to put it simply, it was Ballora. The disembodied voice hadn't specified what exactly Ballora would do if she "caught" him, but from the implications Michael could assume it wouldn't be nice. She'd also very kindly informed him that if he wanted any chance of that unspecified but dire fate, he had to move slowly and stealthily instead of quickly like he'd intended (and like HandUnit, who had came back online moments after "Baby" had finished talking, had told him to. It wasn't hard to figure out who to trust; HandUnit had been malfunctioning all shift and "Baby" had just saved him from presumably being torn apart by tiny slightly scarier Cabbage Patch kids.)

While Michael could say he was fairly quiet, he had no idea how sensitive the robot dancer's hearing was, although his new guide had assured him he had to be as quiet as possible if he wanted to stand a chance of survival.

In the brief reprieve before he actually climbed out into the auditorium, Michael took a moment to assess just how fucked up this situation was. He was alone, underground, in a facility that despite what he'd been told seemed like it hadn't been touched for years (even if the technology here was well beyond his understanding). The robots here, as well as apparently being sentient (and he couldn't wait to get home so he could lie in bed and think about just how odd this was), were out for blood. His blood.

Fun.

Deciding there was no point in wasting any time (since however long he waited, the time it would take him to get to the breaker room wouldn't get any shorter), Michael took a deep breath and plunged into the darkness.

As soon as the vent behind him closed (with a very subtle announcement from the vent speakers), there was an eerie silence. Michael had his torch, and some part of him knew that light wasn't an issue with Ballora, but he still couldn't see very far into the room. It still gave off the impression of being huge, but if he turned his torch off and squinted, he could just make out a speck of light in the distance.

At least he knew what to aim for.

The silence, however, didn't scare him as much as he'd expected it to. He'd been informed by "Baby" that Ballora played music wherever she went, so the lack of it led him to assume that she was far away. It did also remind him of the sheer size of the gallery, though.

Well, better get a move on.

Michael hadn't stood since entering the gallery, and he was hunched over on his knees, the back of his foot resting lightly against the wall. He figured there was no point, since he'd been told to crawl anyway. He briefly wondered why, but then reasoned that the footsteps of his boots were probably going to make more noise than the rustling of his clothes. Maybe that way she'd think he was a mouse, or a rat, or something.

(That wasn't likely. There weren't even cobwebs; it was like nothing lived down here.)

Hazarding a shaky breath of relief that at least Ballora wasn't waiting for him at the entrance to the auditorium, Michael began to shuffle out into the darkness. The feeling gave him an impression almost of how it must feel to swim out into the deep-sea, stepping over the shelf of a coral reef and suddenly finding miles of empty pitch-black space below. One of Michael's classmates had did that - some sort of tourist attraction he'd experienced on holiday - and Michael had overheard him telling his friends it was one of the most exciting experiences in his life, as well as the most terrifying. Right now, Michael could definitely empathize with the latter (not so much the former.)

It was strangely anticlimactic to begin moving. Michael had half-expected Ballora to be nearby from the beginning, but instead there was nothing. He couldn't, however, bring himself to feel safe - not by a long shot. If he relaxed too much, he could miss the music that meant he had to be very still and quiet, and from what he'd been told, that would end in a much less than pleasant experience for him. Plus, in contrast to the silence, the sound of his pants brushing against the floor as he crawled sounded almost deafening. He again wondered how sensitive her hearing was - could she hear him from across the room with ease? Was she staying silent just to toy with him and make him think he was safe?

Was this a trap?

In the distance, he could hear something. He froze, straining his ears. For a moment, he thought maybe it was just his imagination, but then he heard it again. Shit, it was her, wasn't it? Faintly, the sound of music began to grow louder until he could properly make it out. It wasn't a song he could say he recognized the name of, but like near everything else in this place it stirred up some deep, long-buried memories. Through his fear, he found himself thinking of a carousel, or some other fairground ride.

He'd been to a fairground with his family just weeks before the Bite.

_ It was late evening, and most of the afternoon had been spent on the beach. Utah was far away from the coast, so the Afton family had decided to take a vacation to nearer to the sea. At some point, as the sun began to go down, Michael's mom had spotted the colourful lights of a fairground, and the younger kids had practically dragged them over. _

_ There'd been a carousel. Michael hadn't wanted to go on it - he was too old for that crap - but Cassidy and Elizabeth had begged and begged their parents until they'd caved and paid for a ride. They'd asked if Michael was sure he didn't want to go on it as well, but he'd insisted, and instead he stood and watched. He would never have admitted it, but he thought the ride was beautiful, especially lit up against the now dark sky and with that almost eerie music- _

_ Oh. _

There was barely any time to reminisce, though, because the music was getting louder and louder. The beam of his flashlight shook along with his hands as he fought to stay still - to breathe as quietly as possible. Now that it was closer, he could hear it was coming from the right, near the middle of the room. He wondered if there was a route to her movement. He wasn't even sure how she moved.

From the poster he'd seen - and that was, of course, the most he'd seen apart from the silhouette of her the previous night - it looked like Ballora was permanently supposed to be on her toes. Her main movement seemed to be spinning in some sort of imitation of the dancers in a music box. Another memory came to him, and he had to fight to not give a quiet sigh.

_ Elizabeth's favorite of her toys had been a music box, with a tiny ballerina spinning whenever the box was opened. It had been one of the things that was only hers (even with William owning restaurant, sometimes money was short, something Michael was only just beginning to understand at that time, and most of Cassidy and Elizabeth's toys were shared. This music box, however, was hers and only hers) and Michael was pretty sure she once hissed at their dad when he'd moved it, and William was the only family member she was never unpleasant to. _

It made sense that William had designed a ballerina, is what Michael was trying to convey. Speaking of, she seemed to be moving further away, the eerie melody was fading. He couldn't bring himself to be relieved, however, as he glanced up to see the door seemed no closer. Cautioning a look backwards, however, told him he'd been travelling for long enough that the vent he'd entered through was nowhere to be seen, even when he awkwardly contorted himself to point the flashlight backwards.

Stifling a sigh, Michael guessed it was time to continue moving.

This time he could crawl for longer, hardly a relief when the going was as slow as it was. Now that he knew when she was coming, it was easier to figure out which noises would distract him from the music, but that didn't mean it wasn't incredibly awkward to stay that quiet while dragging himself across the floor.

**_"It seems that you are taking a long time. Please proceed as quickly and as quietly as possible."_ **

Michael dropped his flashlight, forgetting the need to be quiet for a moment and hissing out a curse. HandUnit had  _ said  _ it would be deactivated, what the hell?

And the music was getting louder again. Fucking wonderful. Michael scrambled to pick up the flashlight, which was starting to roll away. Then, all he could do was brace himself.

This time, Ballora passed by closer. So close, in fact, that she moved through the beam of Michael's flashlight. And Michael almost swore again, because  _ nobody told him she was that tall. _

Obviously her height was a bit exaggerated by the fact that Michael was on the floor, but he got the impression that she would tower over him standing, and he was far from a short man. He hadn't been this close to any of the robots yet, so he hadn't known what to expect, but in person Ballora looked  _ weird. _

He'd known what her basic design looked like from the poster, but that didn't do justice to just how alien the animatronic dancer seemed as she spun into the light, with the almost chrome-like material reflecting back, and the dark space between the panels that made up her body was just exaggerated by the dim light.

Simply put, she was horrifying.

As quick as she danced into his line of vision, however, she left, and this time Michael let his shoulders sag in relief. That was close. He still stalled for moments longer, until the music was barely audible.

Then, probably a bit quicker than "Baby" had suggested, he carried on crawling.

Thankfully, nothing happened between him and the door, and  _ finally _ he made it. The door was illuminated by a single light above it, and from there Michael easily found the handle and slipped through. He didn't even care if the thud of the door closing echoed back into the auditorium, because he was safe.

Or not.

The room he'd just entered was just as dark as the auditorium, but this time his torch could make out things around him - it was smaller, for a start. His view was obstructed by piles of wires hanging down from the ceiling (not the type of organisation he'd recommend, but oh well) and. Shit there was another one.

The room was dark, but at that moment something flashed and he could see an animatronic.

It was very clearly a bear - it had similar designs to what Michael remembered from the many Freddy iterations there had been, and it was white and... pink? Purple? He couldn't quite make out which. It was also huge. Like Ballora, it towered over him, and there was seemingly no reason for the giant proportions. As well as this, there was a littler robot attached to this creepy Freddy's hand, like a puppet. It was a blue rabbit, and it reminded Michael slightly of the Bonnie character from the Fazbear restaurants. Fortunately, the robot as a whole didn't seem to be active, which gave him some reprieve at least. It had probably been stored here to keep it out of the way of any kids finding it. Michael decided to take out HandUnit (which had been tucked away in his belt through the duration of the crawl), only to find it already on.

_ "You may now interface with the breaker control box."  _ Huh. It was almost like it had been waiting for him to pick it up to "speak".

Michael glanced up to find that there was indeed a control box in the room in front of him. There were a number of buttons, but most notably there was a monitor. He picked it up and it flickered to life. There were a number of buttons, as well as a map of the facility (and more, Michael noted; there were little disconnected rooms). Needless to say, Michael was fairly shocked by how big the place was despite his little range of movement in the past couple of days.

The buttons seemed to all correspond to parts of the facility, if the labels were anything to go by, and Michael noticed that a significant amount of them had a "restart" button instead of the green "online". It was then when some beeping caught his attention, and he noticed that in the corner of the screen there was a "danger level".

It was full.

Quickly lifting his head from the monitor, he saw that not much had changed (at least, he hadn’t paid enough attention to the Freddy to see it move a meter closer). There was a button, however, on the box labelled "Mascot Response Audio", which definitely raised his suspicions. He pressed it, and a child-like voice piped up from where he'd last seen the giant Freddy.

_ "Nope, no one is here." _

Oh. So maybe the robot wasn't deactivated. There had to be a reason the the mascot response button, so Michael decided to keep an eye on the robot. Sure enough, when the flashes that had been happening semi-regularly happened, Michael noticed its position was slightly different. This time, though, he had a defense, and he pressed the button only to have what he assumed was the hand puppet rattle off another comforting line.

The Freddy was back to where he had been.

So that's how it works.

Why there was a built in defense system for a supposedly out of commission robot, Michael had no clue. He was past questioning things in this place. At some point during the journey over here, Michael realised he’d stopped being scared; or rather, he was so scared he’d managed to block it out. That was worrying.

Glancing down at the monitor, he began to go through the process of restarting the various functions. This, unsurprisingly (William seemed to have designed this to be easy in case Michael hadn’t actually taken a similar route to himself, much to Michael’s chagrin), consisted of pressing a few buttons and keeping an eye on the Freddy. He decided its name was probably Funtime Freddy, although it wasn’t like it’d been written anywhere. The thing shared a pink and white colour scheme with Funtime Foxy, and there’d been a distinct lack of “Foxy” in the naming of Funtime Auditorium. Usually, that would mean nothing to Michael, but both of the other showrooms were named after the singular character that inhabited them, so Michael could safely assume that this Freddy was also a “Funtime”. He also discovered that the tiny rabbit puppet (by tiny, he meant relatively - the thing was still bigger than his head in its entirety) was BonBon, from one of the glitchy voice lines Freddy was calling across the room at various points.

While the task in itself wasn’t hard, keeping an eye out for Freddy was far from the least challenging thing Michael had done in the past few days. It was a balancing act of restarting the tasks and making sure the thing didn’t come too close - although there wasn’t a distinct warning, apparently everything in this place was out to kill him, so he wasn’t going to let his guard down on the off-chance this one robot was unlike the others.

Although, apparently not everything was. If his assumptions that “Baby” was his secret guide were correct, at least he had one animatronic on his side. If not, he would not like to meet the real Baby.

At one point, Funtime Freddy managed to evade his attention for long enough for it to be right in front of him. By the time he looked up it had already reached out a gleaming metallic arm, the outstretched hand, much like BonBon, bigger than his head. Michael jumped back, letting out a very un-manly shriek, before making BonBon “comfort” the giant bear enough times that it was probably overkill. After that, he kept an extra close eye on it, and managed to keep it far away for the rest of the task.

He was finished. Finally. HandUnit broke the silence, with a cheery (as if nothing was wrong)  _ “Great job! This concludes your tasks for the night.” _

Michael’s relief was visible, his shoulders sagging as he wasted no time in backing away to the door to Ballora Gallery. He wasn’t letting Funtime Freddy out of his sight until he was out of the room. It only faintly occurred to him that he had to go back through the pitch-black gallery, but it hit him full force when he stepped out into blackness.

_ Oh right, I have to go through that again. _

Michael would have been horrified at the idea, however HandUnit’s mention of this ordeal being over (maybe he was being dramatic, but it felt like he’d been here for weeks, not hours) had made him realise just how tired and determined to leave he was, so he dropped to a crawl with barely any complaints and began to shuffle across the room with his mind preoccupied with how long he was going to sleep as soon as he got home.

Which was probably a bad idea, as just as he saw the light denoting the vents he heard a voice from behind him.

_ “Is someone there?” _

Michael froze, because that was Ballora. She was right behind him. She heard him. He was going to die.

_ “I can hear someone creeping through my room.” _

Don’t make a sound, Michael told himself. Don’t even breathe.

_ “...” _

Michael wondered if Ballora would kill him, and how she would do it. The details were vague from the warnings from Baby. He doubted Ballora was armed with a knife or some other kind of weapon somehow. That left limited options. Maybe she’d tear him to pieces - if those creepy doll-like things were strong, a seven-feet tall robot had to be even stronger. Although, maybe she’d leave it to those things. He hoped not. He’d never liked the idea of smaller things crawling all over him.

_ “Perhaps... not.” _

If there was a God, Michael was thanking them. He could barely move, barely breathe, but Ballora hadn’t caught him. He waited a few moments, maybe to make sure she was gone, or maybe to gain control of his own body again, but soon he managed to (weakly) drag himself back to the vents.

***

From there, it was a blur. Michael couldn’t even remember leaving the facility. He couldn’t remember getting home, although he could somehow remember seeing the sun rise as he staggered back. The next thing he knew, he woke up in his bed, still fully clothed from the night before.

He did not feel well rested, even though a glance at the clock told him it was 5pm already.

“There is no way I’m going back there,” Michael muttered to himself.

***

Six hours later, Michael found himself in the elevator again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok not gonna lie i think i'm most happy w how this chapter turned out so far!


	5. 05 - April 17th, 1991

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> night three begins. michael learns something big.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before we start, i would like to sincerely apologize about the three month gap between chapters, and also that this chapter is short! i'm planning on trying to get 6 up asap to make up for that!!! for now, though, enjoy!

This was a mistake. Coming back here had been a mistake. That’s what Michael said to himself even as he stood in the elevator once more, HandUnit in his hands, and (somewhat) ready for whatever near death experiences he would be subjected to next. On the way down, HandUnit had pulled another prank - changing the aptly named “elevator music” to what it described as “casual bongos”. If this job had been less life-threatening, he may have laughed.

Laughing didn’t feel appropriate down here anymore.

It had also said some scarily self aware things.

Absently, Michael wondered if his dad had meant for this to be so deadly. At first the idea seemed ridiculous, but then again Michael had always had a weird relationship with his father when death was involved.

He’d grown exceptionally close to Will after the death of Cassidy, and although it was a relief he hadn’t been completely disowned from the family, the way his father acted in the aftermath was… odd. Almost like he was proud of Michael for what he did. At the time, Michael’s mother had pulled him aside and told him that he was just dealing with the grief differently, but she also warned him not to listen to anything he said on the subject. It had been the start of their marriage breaking down, although at the time Michael was much too young to realise that, but looking back he was far from surprised.

His dad was, like he’d said, odd.. And not odd in the harmless way. In the way that Michael had used as comfort after the Bite, but now he was older it struck him just how bad the situation had been. He’d been looking at everything through a lens of guilt and grief at the time, and he was sure Will had too, but his actions didn’t add up to the picture of a mourning father that everyone else seemed to see.

In the time between the Bite and Elizabeth vanishing, there was no doubt that Michael was closer to his father, at least until the inevitable split. And maybe that’s why he was taking this in his stride, or at least was stupid enough to keep coming back. 

HandUnit informed him that because of his “lackluster” performance, he was going to have some of his pay deducted. He barely bared.

“Dad, what the fuck did you do here?” he muttered to himself, just as the elevator shuddered to a stop and the abrupt, stuttering sounds of the doors opening sounded over the fading bongos.

The vents were as claustrophobic and unpleasant as ever, and HandUnit went on to inform him of his duties - Michael swore under his breath as it told him the qualified technicians had been “unsuccessful” at disconnecting Funtime Freddy (the mention of physical therapy didn’t escape Michael’s notice, and he shuddered at the thought that whoever ran this place was essentially using him as the more disposable equivalent, although he could hardly blame them) and it was his job to try again.

He thanked his lucky stars he was actually somewhat qualified for this, and had this job been given to him two days ago he might have jumped at the chance to show this invisible (and possibly not even human, he thought, it wouldn’t been too much of a stretch to believe HandUnit itself ran the place, seeing as it was the closest thing to a supervisor) boss what he could do.

But he’d seen Freddy, been much more up close and personal than he’d wanted to, and he knew just how intimidating the robot was. Not only that, but he had to go through Funtime Auditorium - Ballora’s Gallery was bad as it is, and something told him this would be worse.

He was not looking forward to this.

At that moment, he emerged out into the comparatively large Primary Control Module, and HandUnit reminded him to check on Ballora. He scrambled over, fully expecting Ballora to be gone, or right up against the glass to scare him, and slammed his hand on the light button.

Whatever he had expected, this was not it.

Ballora was… in pieces. Her limbs, her skirt piece, her torso and her head were all separated, and that wasn’t even the worst part. Those tiny doll-like robots that Michael had noticed on the first night were holding her body parts up, like some kind of macabre display.

_ I’m looking at a corpse,  _ was the first thing that came to his mind, and only moments later did he remember that Ballora was a robot, more like a mannequin than a real person.

It was still weird, though, to see it - her - like this. He was sure the way she had stalked him through her gallery had been more than just the pre-programmed actions she’d been given.

_ They’re not supposed to do that,  _ he thought. He should probably be more concerned at that - no, he should definitely be more concerned at that. At least three different animatronics had threatened his life in as many days, and all he could muster was an exhausted return and pity?

_ What is wrong with me? _

_ “Great. It looks like everything is as it should be in Ballora Gallery.”  _ Michael barely heard HandUnit, and even less of him acknowledged the straight up lie.

The more time Michael spent down here, the more clear it became that nothing added up. The robots were murderous, the AI far beyond anything he could even imagine, and  _ why had none of this come up in his research? _

He was here, though, and he wanted answers. That, at least, was clear.

He proceeded to check on Funtime Foxy, getting the exact same spiel even though the animatronic was nowhere to be found. He didn’t want to go in there.

_ “There is no need to check on Circus Baby tonight.” _

Now  _ that  _ piqued his interest. If he was right, which with the lack of logic this place operated on he could well be, “Baby” could be hiding something. Something that might be able to help him. And honestly, what last night had taught him was that sometimes HandUnit was wrong. Dead wrong.

Ignoring HandUnit’s automated warning, Michael proceeded forward to Circus Gallery. The vents barely bothered him this time, too preoccupied with the chance of getting some answers to the questions that had led him to get barely any sleep the night before, and sooner than expected he was in the module.

Nothing was different. That was a disappointment. It didn’t even look like Circus Baby herself was there, but the lights still seemed to be on the fritz.

An idea, a possibly stupid one but an idea nonetheless, decided to pop into Michael’s head just as he was about to turn around and actually listen to HandUnit.

The crawlspace under the desk. Something could be hidden there. This time, there was no abject terror as Michael dropped down under the desk, just a need for information (and an extreme lack of sleep).

For once though, his exhausted mind was right. No sooner than he crawled under the desk did the speaker system in the facility crackle to life. A familiar female voice pushed through, and Circus Baby began to speak.

“ _ Did you know that I was on stage once? _

_ It wasn’t for very long.. only one day. What a wonderful day, though. _

_ I was in a small room with balloons and a few tables. No-one sat at the tables though, but children would run in and out. Some were afraid of me, others enjoyed my songs. Music was always coming from somewhere else… down a hall. I would always count the children, I’m not sure why. I was always acutely aware of how many there were in the room with me. _

_ Two, then three, then two, then three, then four, then two, then none. They usually played together in groups of two or three. _

_ I was covered in glitter. I smelled like birthday cake. _

_ There were two, then three, then five, then four. _

_ I can do something special, did you know that? I can make ice cream – although I only did it once… _

_ There were four, then three, then two, then one. _

_ Something happened when there was one. A little girl, standing by herself. _

_ I was no longer…myself. And I stopped singing. My stomach opened, and there was ice cream. I couldn’t move, at least not until she stepped closer. There was screaming for a moment… but only for a moment. Then other children rushed in again, but they couldn’t hear her over the sounds of their own excitement. _

_ I still hear her sometimes. Why did that happen?” _

It was only when the faint buzz of the speakers switched off that Michael realised he was crying.

“What the fuck.”

***

Funtime Auditorium, as Michael found out, played by it’s own rules. Or at least, Funtime Foxy did. The opposite of Ballora, she (as HandUnit explained) was motion-activated, and instead of his torch Michael was recommended to use a flash beacon “as sparingly as possible”.

At this point Michael couldn’t even bring himself to care. He’d dragged himself back on-task with a numbness he hadn’t felt in years, something that he distantly remembered as “that’s going to come back to haunt you as soon as you aren’t in immediate danger”. The kind of survival instinct that keeps you going when you can’t afford to process the news you’d just heard. And Michael definitely could not process  _ that  _ right now.

Instead, he pushed forward, filled with a new determination to, to put it lightly,  _ get the fuck out of there.  _ He had to be careful with Foxy, though. It wouldn’t do to keep the light off to avoid the thing only to run into it.

Clambering out into the auditorium, Michael was once again flooded with that dread-filled feeling that he was a small fish about to swim off of the reef and into the endless depths below. This feeling did not let up when the vent closed and he was plunged into pitch blackness.

Michael wasn’t scared of the dark. He was a grown man, and he’d suffered much worse in the daylight than he ever had from whatever goes bump in the night. He wasn’t even that afraid of the unknown; childhood trauma was a hell of a good motivator to develop adaptability beyond what most people needed, and Michael knew he could get through this. He had to.

_ For her,  _ his mind supplied, and he pushed away without a second thought.

However, whatever that might suggest, it was daunting to be standing in a completely dark room, unable to even see his own hand inches away from his face, and to know there was a silent predator waiting for him to give in to the need to see.

Heaving a sigh he was at least confident wouldn’t disturb his new hunter, Michael stepped forward.

The first few steps were daunting, and Michael almost immediately staggered. He managed to find his feet, though, and soon enough he was on his way.


End file.
